It landed in the grove, and exploding redly flung the
brown earth. There was a little shower of pine needles.
While grandmother took the pitchfork we found standing in one of the rows and dug potatoes, while I picked them up out of the soft
brown earth and put them into the bag, I kept looking up at the hawks that were doing what I might so easily do.
The parks were full of children and nursemaids and joyful dogs that leaped and yelped and scratched up the
brown earth with their paws.
Sunshine and blue sky, a salt breeze flavoured just a little with that lavender, and a stroll through my spring gardens, where my hyacinths are like a field of purple and gold, a mantle of jewels upon the
brown earth. Ah, well!
In a very few hours the
brown earth had become ruddy, the brick had changed to granite, and red cows grazed in well-hedged fields where the lush grasses and more luxuriant vegetation spoke of a richer, if a damper, climate.
When I came off the galley at Hythe, this very day, I down on my bones, and I kissed the good
brown earth, as I kiss thee now, ma belle, for it was eight long years since I had seen it.
And all at once I was on fire to be back in the library; so much so, that half a minute at the manhole, lantern in hand, was enough for me; and a mere funnel of moist
brown earth - a terribly low arch propped with beams - as much as I myself ever saw of the subterranean conduit between Kirby House and the sea.
Feverish with desire, with aching back and stiffening muscles, with pick and shovel gouging and mauling the soft
brown earth, the man toiled up the hill.
There was nothing now but the
brown earth under the white thorn.
A few drops of rain and the
brown earth yields to roots that have been waiting to spring out and up with a shout of joy!
Once the weedkiller has done its work, all you see is
brown earth around the trees, utility boxes and along the grass verges.
His son Pepito would write in his memoirs: 'I like to think that it was as he would want it to be-his body commingled with the
brown earth of the country he deeply loved.'
